Biden and the Democrats are getting wrecked on illegal immigration. Democrat supporters in New York like Eric Adams annd Kathy Hochul are turning on them hard due to the sky high illegal migration and subsequent failing public services, and prospect of enormous tax increases to pay for it. Adams is just one among many. Pritzker in Illinois has been vocal about Biden’s failure.
TLDR: This is a 2019 law passed by Congress during the baby hands administration. The Biden administration has been pretty careful not to overstep other branches of government(I think as a direct response to how flagrantly and harmfully baby hands used executive action), and while Biden returned wall money taken from the DoD, the rest of the wall money was explicitly designated by Congress for building the border wall in 2019 and Congress will not cancel that legislative order(wall funds), despite Biden asking Congress to cancel the 2019 wall funds law since arriving in office in 2020.
The money is being legally used for a legislatively required purpose and any federal laws are being broken legislatively by Congress as a result of baby hands in 2019, not the Biden administration.
any federal laws are being broken legislatively by Congress as a result of baby hands in 2019, not the Biden administration.
How can congress legally break federal laws? I understand that the money is allocated, but how can the money have even been allocated toward something that was breaking laws in the first place?
The executive branch has to deal with how to execute laws passed, even when they are in conflict with one another. So there is a lot of leeway provided to deal with those conflicts.
It’s hard to say exactly how necessary it is for the DHS to waive these 26 laws, but the argument is that in order to abide by the more pressing matter (the immigration laws and funding), they must ignore the other 26.
I am not as willing to concede that this is entirely out of the Biden administrations control. Instead of waiving all the 26 laws, why not use them to drag out the time and costs? They are mainly be about environmental studies, public feedback, and other measures that soak up funds and take a lot of time. If this administration was truly serious about not wanting to build the wall, they’re basically going against that by fast-tracking it.
I’m much more inclined to think there is a quid pro quo going on and them giving in on the wall - especially in this particular manner - is in exchange for something else. But that’s not something political leaders will be transparent about. We see checkers, but a chess game is happening (out of our vision).
Not a legal expert, but often certain laws have to be broken for others to be enacted.
4th amendment unreasonable search and seizure is waived by the TSA, for example.
To build 20 miles of ineffective wall legally voted for and funded by Congress(by us, though) that disrupts the ecosystem, the Homeland Security Secretary(in the executive branch) has waived the affected envuronmental laws to allow the wall’s legally mandated construction.
Biden could probably write enough executive orders that he could get the funding to go somewhere else, but that would cause innumerable breaches of power and constitutional imbalances, and we didn’t elect a king, we elected a president who is meant to be in charge of only one branch of the government, something cheeto didn’t understand.
Even though Biden has said he doesn’t believe the wall helps with immigration, he’s not going to overstep his role in the executive branch in this case to interfere with Congress, I suspect as a deliberate response to constant cheeto interference in other branches of government during the last administration.
One thing we can do better as opponents of Trump (or anyone else for that matter) is to not go for the low hanging fruit of things the man can't change about himself. Like his hands. Or the alleged size of, well, you know.
His fake tan or hair are better targets, at least he chooses that part of his appearance, but I'd like to think we can do better than that as well. A grey (or brown) area is his alleged incontinence which, if it's real (and I really, really wouldn't want to check that), it's said he ultimately did it to himself. Could be a target, but also probably best avoided.
Now. His policies. His wrong-thinking. Anything that might harm or put people in danger? Sure. Go nuts. Tear the man a new one.
The low-hanging fruit does have the benefit of riling him and his less intelligent advocates, but as the man himself would do in a similar situation, those are the things to bring out at the end of an argument when you feel like you're losing or at least not getting through a thick skull ... metaphorically speaking. And preferably after they've already done the same.
The hands nickname has upset more people than I would have thought, but do his hands even look tiny to you?
I used it here as a reference for him because he doesn’t deserve a proper name, because of his constant body shaming toward others and his apparent insecurity toward his normal-sized hands.
I still personally think equal treatment is more fair than protecting belligerents, but I have agreed to stop using cheeto’s hands nickname in this community at the request of other users here.
Can you be more specific about what you mean by “sudden”? The Biden admin has had more encounters, more apprehensions, and more deportations than the last 4 administrations. Conservatives like to claim that his policies have caused a surge but the fact is that nearly 99% of border crossers are detained thanks to technology that we have and, if Biden was as welcoming as they claim, CBP wouldn’t be apprehending these people and sending them back. In fact, CBP claims that most of the border crossers today have had previous encounters from the Trump admin where they weren’t deported properly or had any charges levied against them to keep them from coming back into the US.
Regardless of what side you’re on, the whole immigration situation is stupid. They’re all posturing and none of the really want to work on the problem seriously. No doubt it’s a difficult problem. But based on their actions, they all seem ok with the status quo.
Absolutely. It’s political suicide for many of them. So they don’t rock the boat.
It’s a great example of where term limits could help. Great leaders will sometimes take actions that won’t get them re-elected. Immigration reform is one of those bullets someone needs to catch. But no one is willing to.
Even on the right where you might think anti-immigration stance is an easy winner, the corporate interests (donors) clash with the public opinion (voters). Immigrants are workers, a critical cog in the wheel of big business. But the right’s base LOVES a good “keep ‘em out” campaign. So what does the politician do? Say/do one thing (BIG WALLS) and turn a blind eye to another (massive amounts of undocumented workers employed by domestic firms). This side would usually go for the “it’s good for business” line (which holds a lot of truth). But they’ve been told it’s the immigrants’ faults they aren’t getting their fair share of the financial pie. So this false narrative to shed blame for wealth inequality causes a conflict in immigration policy with donor interest. Political suicide to act on it. Lose your voters or your donors.
The left is tricky too, believe it or not. Many left-leaning Americans have negative views about immigration and see border security as a huge issue. Even those that want increased ways to legal status also say they want more border security. The humanitarian view actually doesn’t have that much sway in voter opinion. And this side also isn’t likely to be convinced by the economic view (corporations will do better with more cheap labor) as that’s more aligned with right-leaning economy first views. This is where I think term limits would be useful because some left-leaning leaders could choose to handle true immigration reform in a way that appeases corporate donors but slightly disappoints voters. The kickback would be unlikely to last as long (not an entire party issue), but it would lose voters for that individual, almost definitely.
The money had been allocated by Congress to only be used on the wall. Biden’s tried to get it reallocated, but Congress won’t budge on it. Why now? I’m guessing: try to pacify the immigration fearmongering, and as a little bonus get some of that money out there circulating.
Where did you see that? I saw an article where they said walls don’t work or something today, is that what you’re referring to?
Edit, found this:
In the Oval Office on Thursday, Biden made clear that he was moving forward with wall construction grudgingly, in order to comply with funds appropriated by Congress in 2019. He said he had tried and failed to get Congress to redirect the funding it had allocated for wall construction in south Texas. “The money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. In the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” he said.
The government shuts down when there's no budget passed by Congress authorizing the money to keep it open. This isn't a good thing but happens when Congress can't get it's act straight. Crazy Republicans from deep red districts are making basic governing impossible, like passing a budget.
Because congress has totally abdicated their constitutional duties - read it - this is not how our government works - this is an inexorably broken government - both sides.
Congress is supposed to decide yearly on how and where money gets spent in the federal government budget. If they do not pass the budget before the old one expires, the federal government cannot spend any more money, and it’s operations immediately cease.
The political factions of Congress get into pretty regular spats over how the money is spent, either because not enough is going towards projects certain factions want, or too much is going towards projects that other factions are staunchly opposed to. Sometimes unrelated law bills get tacked to the side that become a point of contention too. With politics becoming more and more polarized, they reach deadlock and can’t agree on the budget, and bam, you get a shutdown.
The same goes for the artificial “debt ceiling” Congress imposed upon themselves that limits how much money the government can borrow from… well, itself, basically. When they hit the cap they also cannot continue spending, so it has to be regularly increased (achieving absolutely nothing)
Either/both sides can and will try to threaten a shutdown as a bargaining chip to get what they want, but it’s so overused at this point that it really doesn’t help much. They still run right to the end, pass some temporary in-situ funding agreements, continue the deadlock, then go back to massive deficit spending at the end of the day anyway.
I’m not American, so I assume I don’t have the full story. But i feel like everytime I hear about government shutdown / not passing budgets it’s republican politicians. Is that accurate? Or do both parties do it equally often?
I would note that the USA is about the only place this is actually possible.
In pretty much all other democracies, if the parliament fails to pass the budget bill, it triggers a dissolution of both houses and an election is held.
It’s an unfortunately common, bullshit move politicians pull, just to have something to hang over each other’s heads in order to get what they want. Unfortunately, that has become totally ok in the eyes of Republican voters because it’s often the only way for their reps to force through budget items that would otherwise never make it.
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